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Hi everyone.
I have removed the gpu clamp from the bottom of the xbox motherboard, there seems to be some blown components, therefore I was hoping there was some good photo's of the motherboard with gpu xclamp removed?? Any help is v much appreciated.
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Why was Hypertransport classified as a serial bus? As implemented on K8, it's a 16-bit wide data bus in each direction, so 32 pins in total for data per HT link. Moreover it doesn't have any SERDES logic (serializer/deserializer that converts parallel data to serial data and vice versa). This gives Hypertransport a latency advantage over serial links that require these extra steps, and low latency, as I understand it, was one of the main concerns when developing Hypertransport. Reply

I wondered the same thing. Althought the author is confused on this point he does make a nice comparison between serial and parallel buses.

"Note the clear definition of the traces the clean routing, to the point where you can count the individual data, address and clock lines:"

This statement also is a little misleading since every serial bus that I have looked at (PCIe/SATA/IB) dervives the clock from the data stream. Additionally the address and data are typically sent on the same lines in the form of a packet.

Good article. I'm looking forward to the flurry of xbox 360 hacking that is about to ensue. Reply

I like the inclusion of the little thumbnails with red circles on them. It's a simple yet effective method of communicating just where something is on the motherboard. Props to whoever proposed that idea!

Robbie Bach, the chief Xbox officer, even came down for a visit once to make sure all the WebTV folks stayed aboard and helped with the 360. He knew that they had a lot of options in the valley. One of the chips they designed was a TV encoder that would support the TV-side of the system.

This is a great breakdown of a very custom, sophisticated motherboard. I was wondering if Anandtech could do the same thing with another custom, sophisticatd moetherboard...the one in the Powermac G5. That's got to have some pretty cool features also. Reply

I don't think you can modify it now to run Linux - at least not to run Linux well. The hardware inside doesn't have yet drivers in Linux (while the CPU could be supported right now by Linux, the video probably isn't. The others probably are, but might not identify themselves as the parts they (just like the chips are engraved with Microsoft XBox 360 no matter who produce them) Reply

Yes, playing the game, are ANY games 60 FPS? 30 FPS is the previous gen, we're moving to a new era where all games needs to be 60fps... Namely Bizarre, who keeps saying that their PGr3 game will run at 60 fps... But been so quiet since they said it.. In fact, no one mentions it... Bizarre probably has a NDA on that because people will not buy the game because it didn't hit 60fps. Reply

All kidding aside, it is interesting to see the ways the board designers try to make all the traces the same length from the GPU to the memory. It also shows that the technology is so fast, that slight differences in the amount of time it takes the signal to travel can cause errors. Reply

They are just like physical copper wires and those lines are not there for beauty either. Some lines carry data and others transmit the various levels of power (voltage) needed to run the components. These are the lines that keep every thing on and connected to each other. Reply

Power can be provided using two complete layers- one for ground, one for power. With the added benefit that, if they separate layers with data connections (those nice lines), they reduce interference between signals on different layers. Reply

3 times the price of an xbox360 isnt that much really. Especially when you think about the tenfold possibilites you have with a PC compared to a console. These arguments just dont cut it. If you can get the games you want to play on the PC you work with, no point in buying a console. If you prefer the console style games and dont really care too much about a PC besides browsing and e-mails, stick to the consoles.

If you want the best of both worlds, get both.

I dont own a console because I realized, the games I like to play are simply sub standard as far as playability is concerned on consoles and/or dont exists (yet) and when they do, they play horrible due to other limitations.